Over 1,188 reviews forEl Cajon Architects from people just like you.

for our house remodel project. We never met the husband, only the wife,

had communicated" ...More with us. Their fee was 10% of the construction cost. Once we had paid them for measuring and CAD drawings of the house,

's responsiveness and professionalism went downhill. I had provided our wish list written in a specification requirements document and it seemed she had never read or understood any of our scope of work communicated.

has a high-strung personality; was not easy to work with - I would recommend to look for talented architects who respect homeowners' wishes and dreams.

-amy H.

A

"We needed to have an old screened porch removed and a new one built in its place. The work was completed in a timely manner, and the end result was a beautiful porch.

Architect first - for around $1000 typically you will get site consultation, a few sketches showing what you said you wanted, and a preliminary (by the book) cost estimate - that you can use to figure if your budget or scope of work needs major adjustment. Then, if you go ahead, typically about 10-20% of total project cost for complete plans and specs (including above cost), depending on complexity and level of interior design detail, and if construction inspection services are included.

Generally, nothing is free with an architect - unlike a contractor where a bit of consultation and a rough estimate is a lead-in to the actual work he hopes to get (the construction/repair) and part of his bidding cost, an architect (and engineer) makes his living giving advice and consultation and developing designs and cost estimates - so giving it away for free is sort of like a dentist doing sample fillings for free. Some will come to your house to discuss your concepts for 15-20 minutes for free, basically to see if they want to take you on as a client or feel your job is the type or size they want, but you should expect little or nothing in the way of a design or cost estimate for free - the most you might get would be an opinion on whether it sounds, off the cuff, like your budget is roughly in line with your desired scope of the project.

On more complex or up-scale remodels, it is not unusual to contact several architecture firms and request proposals - where they basically come see the site, then give you a sketch or few or more common today, computer-generated altered photos of your place, showing conceptually what they can do for you, then you choose the one you like the most and go with that one for final design. Typically $500-1000 range fee (each) to get that done for small jobs, larger jobs will typically be no charge but that assumes probably $25-50,000 plus anticipated fees if they get the job.

Bear in mind in the latter scenario you cannot pick and choose betweenthe best parts of each proposal - the architect owns the design and it is copyrighted, so while you can choose bui9lding elements (dormers, bay windows, etc) from any of the proposals, specific design or color combinations are copyrighted by the proposer.

Architect Service reviews in El Cajon

A

Rating

“

Pat was great -- she was responsive and incredibly easy to work with. We went through several iterations of

/layout in the early stages. I really appreciated her ability to listen and incorporate our wishes/requirements but also her forthrightness about things that wouldn't work as well. When we started construction, she ...More worked with our contractor to ensure that things went according to plan and was responsive to his questions as well. When the structure was up and there was a wall that I didn't like the view of from my kitchen, she came back out and helped devise a solution to fix it. I am very happy with the layout of the addition and the space design. It is a testament to the quality of her work that the addition blends incredibly well with the original house. People are incredulous that it is an addition (even some of the neighbors who were admittedly very skeptical about the addition plans have said that she did an amazing job).

”

- Laurel R.

F

Rating

“

"

" used to be called "Deontology Design & Build" and "

Craftsman". We sued Deontology,

and

for Fraud and violation of the Consumer Protection Act. King County Superior Court awarded us $92,990.43 in damages as of January 2015. ...More This is available public information.

and

asked for and took $ 72,354.34 in cash from us to order materials and begin our project. and we paid them The whole project was budgeted at $131K. Workers checks started bouncing two weeks into the project, when the demo was not yet completed. The iRS and their suppliers notified us that Deontology owed money for taxes, materials and services. Suppliers attempted to take

on our house because the money we gave

and

were not used to pay for our materials. They refused to account for the funds. We were forced to complete the project ourselves as we were living in a demolished house in January 2014 through May 2014 without the use of the $72K in personal savings that we paid to them. There is at least one other similar lawsuit against them for the same time period, for the same actions, different family. King County Superior Court awarded us an additional $25,000 in Statutory Treble Damages in addition to the Principle Damages due to

and

's violation of the Consumer Protection Act. Everything I have stated is documented in court documents in King County.

”

- Nina L.

A

Rating

“

We originally purchased a Big Deal for

to evaluate our major remodel plans, and then went ahead and worked with him to get plans to move forward with our remodel. He did a good job listening to our wants and needs, and adjusting to our feedback. In addition to our ideas, he provided some good ideas that hadn't occurred to ...More us, which improved the end result greatly, like turning our staircase to improve the flow of the kitchen remodel. We moved several walls and changed the layout of our spaces, and it feels much more functional and logical now. We actually just contacted him to use his services again.”

- Adrienne B.

D

Rating

“

It wasn’t good. When I purchased the deal, it said measurement and estimate for kitchen or basement. When he got there, he said it was wrong and the deal was for a kitchen and not a basement. He tried to make me feel guilty for doing the work. When I mentioned trying to get a refund, he changed his story and said he would still do the work.”

- Joyce H.

F

Rating

“

1. He claims a pay as you go model. You pay and he delivers just enough to make you think he's going to deliver . You then sit for months waiting for his team to show up and then actually finish a task.
2. He starts work without securing the appropriate permits even after many many many emails asking him to secure the permits before continuing ...More the work.
3. He asks you to tell the city permit office the job was "started by another contractor" if asked so that he doesn't get in trouble. Fortunately, we were never asked but have the emails to prove we wanted him to get the permits in place. Contract was signed in January, permits issued in May. I believe he uses this as a way to get your money and then stall on delivery.4. He doesn't follow up on the quality--or lack there of--done by his team and become virtually impossible to find unless you spend hours of time chasing him. I have a poorly installed fence, a sprinkler system which he pulled out and didn't re-install, the pump and salt system were never re-installed and I had to pay someone to fix all of the above.
5. He doesn't close out permits leaving them to expire. In some cities that results in a fine such as in Miami

. Where then you have to re-start the permitting process.
6. He generally sells you one thing and then delivers half-finished, or poorly completed results.
BUYER BEWARE

”

- Lisa R.

F

Rating

“

Based on our first contact, we were very happy with

Relton. He came out to the house to discuss our plans to add a second floor to our home. His ideas were very useful, and his proposal and initial communication looked good. Coupled with seeing A's across the board on Angie's List, we felt pretty confident accepting ...More his proposal and moving forward.
After our initial payment,

seemed to

. We didn't hear from him for weeks, but tried to give him the benefit of the doubt because we were happy with his work, his reviews on this site and the gut feeling we had about him. He had estimated that it would take 5-6 weeks to go through all of the steps and end up with final architectural drawings. After about 6 weeks we had nothing. We made excuses for him, like 'it's holiday season' or 'he must be busy with other work'. Around the 8th week we got some preliminary drawings, and felt guilty for getting so annoyed. The drawings were good! We had some good discussion about them,

made some adjustments and got initial pricing from a couple builders. We followed up with some questions, and then... he vanished again.
We tried e-mailing and calling for a couple weeks to no avail. After a month of no response at all (about 14 weeks since we accepted his proposal), I called his office and discovered that the number had been disconnected. I called his cell phone and got a message that his voicemail inbox was full. I can only conclude that he has gone out of business, and that we're out $1,000 and close to 4 months of time. The drawings we got, nice though they were, were not signed and sealed. They are useless for the purposes of obtaining a permit from the town or independent pricing from builders. We have nothing to show for our experience with

.”

- Linda K.

F

Rating

“

He never started the work. He had the money in advance for the job. He never scheduled workers. I have taken him to court and he's ordered to pay monthly. I've only gotten 3 payments. He's two months behind.”

- LORI A.

A

Rating

“

I bought the coupon for 3.5 hours of consultation service to get ideas of expanding the front entry / porch area. We didn't know what we wanted except to make it "better". This was also the first time we would be doing something structural to the house.

and

arrived right on time as scheduled ...More and promptly addressed our goals. They listened to what we wanted and answered all our questions.

is obviously very good at what he does because he came up with sketches right on the spot, he then explained the process of continuing on with the project. I got a detailed drawing in a week, which is something we could use should we decide to move forward. Our initial phone call was about 15 min and the meeting was about an hour. With the detailed plan I definitely we got what we wanted from the coupon. I highly recommend